It’s hard to tell whether social media and streaming have been a net positive or negative for music in general. On the one hand, anyone with an internet connection and the most basic recording setup can distribute their music onto the internet within minutes. But on the other hand, it’s relegated musicians to the roles of Content Creators, requiring them to keep releasing a constant stream of new music to keep their audience’s attention.

But somehow, Holy Fawn has more or less managed to escape that trap. Their 2018 full-length Death Spells still feels as fresh and hype-worthy as it did when it first exploded across the internet. There were some other releases in their catalog—a 2015 EP that no one really paid attention to (myself until recently), a three-track EP in early 2020, and a couple remixes and covers, but Death Spells has remained the standard bearer for the band—and the entire heavy, moody shoegaze scene since, it seems .

I say all of this to point out that we didn’t need another Holy Fawn record. But damn, am I glad we got it, because Dimensional Bleed is proof that the Arizona quartet can conjure lightning to strike at least twice.

It’s been hard for me to communicate to people just how much I loved Death Spells. I put it on my 2019 year end list even though it was released a year earlier (the physical edition released in 2019, I constantly justified). It made it onto my Best of the 2010s list even though it had barely a year to make its impact. One of my most reliable avenues for finding new music the last couple years has been to scan the “Fans Also Like” section of their Spotify page, which is almost always a fruitful endeavor.

So when I heard the rumor of a full album (around the time the “Death is a Relief” video dropped) I was filled with an excitement that rode the line between anticipation and anxiety. Death Spells already provided the Platonic ideal of what this sort of heavy shoegaze should be. There was a very real possibility that its follow up would fall far short, offering up a huge disappointment from one of my favorite bands of the last five years.

And to my great relief, those fears were unfounded. Of course, time will tell how this record will age compared to Death Spells, but it scratches every itch agitated by its predecessor. It’s not quite as immediate as the former record, but that’s mostly on account of not opening with “Dark Stone”—even the rest of Death Spells is less immediate than that track.

But Dimensional Bleed picks up with the band doing what they do best: creating dense layers of vibrant atmospheres that shift from delicate ambiance to crushing walls of sound. From the epic mood shifting of “Empty Vials” to the brief metal gloom of the title track to the Sigur Ros-y joie de vivre of “True Loss,” every reverb-drenched moment is absolutely gorgeous. Holy Fawn exercises a more nuanced approach than Death Spells, communicating in fine details rather than large brush strokes. The atmospheres themselves are filled with these sonic details: a warped acoustic guitar, a detuned piano, a pulsing drum machine, buried in the mix, but just as clear as a crushing guitar chord.

And when the record fades, I’m left with the exact same satisfaction as when the closing moments of Death Spells left me with. And I’ll say again: I probably could have listened to just that one record for the rest of my life and still called the band one of my favorites. But Dimensional Bleed is a welcome follow up that—at least so far—stands eye to eye with its predecessor’s impossibly high standards.